Peine Forte Et Dure
by Aconitum-Napellus
Summary: Napoleon was buried alive. It's no wonder he's having nightmares, but Illya is there to help him. Just something short. Gen, but they're always a couple somewhere in my mind.


He was lying on his back in the hole. He wanted to move but he couldn't. He tried to flail his arms but he couldn't. His body was like lead. The earth was coming down in clumps, clods, falling on him like hail. He opened his mouth, a great yawning effort, and clods of earth fell into his mouth, rolled on his tongue, touched the back of his throat. He flailed and struggled but the soil was so heavy on his chest, a damp and heavy _peine forte et dure_ that was pressing him into the floor of the grave. He tried to scream as the damp fingers of earth fell all over his face but he inhaled earth, and he choked and choked and –

For the fourth time that night he surfaced from the dream, suddenly lurching upright in bed, gasping, clawing at his mouth and chest, coughing. He tried to cough the soil out of his mouth but there wasn't any soil. There was just darkness and warmth and the steady tick of the clock.

He fell back onto the pillows, feeling the cooling soak of sweat in the sheets beneath him, and pulled in the sweet air. After a little time he reached out and fumbled for the light switch, and soft yellow light filled this little corner of the room. He picked up the glass of water he'd placed by the bed before going to sleep, and drank a little. It tasted stale, but it was more refreshing than the remembered taste of earth in his mouth.

There was a creak and soft footsteps, and the door opened. Illya was standing there in pale blue pyjamas, his top unbuttoned, rubbing a hand through wild blond hair and blinking.

'Again?' he asked.

Napoleon grunted. 'Again,' he said. 'Look, I'm sorry, Illya. I'm glad you decided to stay, but maybe you should try earplugs or something. You need sleep.'

Illya smiled and padded across the room and sat down on the edge of the bed.

'If I tried earplugs I might as well go home. I didn't stay so I could ignore you. Was it the same dream again?'

'It's always the same dream,' Napoleon said. It had been four days since that awful incident, four days since Ezekiel Thorne had tried to bury him alive, and he had only been out of hospital for two nights. The dreams hadn't come until the second night, but then they just hadn't stopped.

Illya patted a hand on his shoulder, then padded wordlessly out of the room. Napoleon lay there. He knew he'd come back. He knew Illya well enough.

There were faint sounds from the far side of the apartment, the kitchen. And then after five minutes Illya came back with a mug in his hand.

'Warm milk,' he said, handing it to Napoleon.

Napoleon took a mouthful, and gave a snorting laugh. 'And whiskey.'

'Of course,' Illya shrugged, as if all cows let down whiskey in their milk. Maybe in Russia the milk came with vodka infused. 'Do you want to talk about it?' he asked.

Napoleon took another mouthful of the milk. 'Not really,' he said. 'After all, you were there.'

Of course Illya had been there. Not quite too late, but not soon enough. The earth had been like a cold, heavy blanket over his entire body by the time Illya arrived, and his face was covered, his mouth full of foul dirt, his nostrils full of it, his eyes pressed closed by it. And he had heard the footsteps, he had even felt them thudding through the ground he was being buried in. He had heard, muffled, Illya's cry of fury, and the sharp bone on bone crack of a punch to the jaw. He had felt the thud of someone falling, but he had been focussed only on trying to move his arms under the cloying weight of soil, on trying to get a hand to his face to clear the dirt from his mouth and nose, but the earth was so heavy on his chest he didn't know if he'd be able to breathe even if he did get his airways clear.

And then a thud that was closer still, and scrabbling, and the heavy weight of a man, his whole weight on Napoleon's arm. So much pain, but the pain was nothing because he couldn't breathe, couldn't move his chest. He was fading in and out of consciousness. And there was so much fevered movement, a hard metal edge striking him more than once, and then fingers, so hot and so soft but none too gentle, scraping the earth from his face. There were hands under his shoulders pulling him, shaking him, and suddenly he gasped in air, and Illya was saying, 'Christ, Napoleon. Christ, I thought you were dead.'

Napoleon had blinked the dirt out of his eyes and he had been gasping for breath, and he saw Illya's face, his cheeks flushed, his eyes wild, the blue of his eyes like pools of sky above him. And he fought and fought for breath, and he spat wet earth from his mouth, and finally he said, 'I think you broke my arm, you klutz.'

Illya brushed earth away from Napoleon's temple with his fingertips and turned them to show his partner. They were red with blood.

'I think I broke your head as well, but it doesn't seem to have damaged your scintillating wit. Do you want to get out of here, or do you really like gardening that much?'

'I never wanted to be the plants I planted,' Napoleon said, but suddenly he was coughing and wheezing and Illya dropped any pretence at lightheartedness to pull him out of the hole and up onto the grass; not a mean feat for a man a good deal under six feet tall, in a hole deeper than he was high. Napoleon still wasn't sure how he had managed it, but Illya had a gymnast's physique, and he regularly astounded Napoleon with his strength.

'There,' Illya had said, arranging Napoleon on the wet grass, brushing soil from his hair, and then pulling him upwards like a rag doll and beating him on the back to help clear the earth from his lungs. 'The ambulance will be here soon.'

'Do I need a – ' Napoleon tried to say around hacking coughs.

'I called one before Thorne even knew I was there, so don't argue. Anyway, I broke your arm, remember.'

'Hard to forget,' Napoleon said, because although it was better than being asphyxiated and crushed under half a ton of earth, the pain in his arm really was excruciating.

There had been two days in hospital while the doctors monitored the crushing injuries, plastered his broken arm, stitched the cuts that Illya had inflicted when driving a sharp-edged spade into the earth to free his friend as fast as possible. In the hospital there had been sleeping pills, but Napoleon hated sleeping pills. Here in his apartment there were just painkillers, and dreams.

'I would have died if you hadn't come,' Napoleon said, drinking his milk, looking obliquely at Illya, who was drenched in the golden lamplight, sitting on the edge of the bed.

'Yes,' Illya said prosaically. 'He was dropping down stones on you when I got there. They used it as a punishment in mediaeval times – or, at least, something like that. They piled weights on a person's chest to try to eke a confession out of them. _Peine forte et dure_ ,' he said, and his voice resonated with a darkness that sent a thrill through Napoleon's spine.

'I studied history at school too,' Napoleon said. He had read how those poor unfortunates had died, crushed under weights of more than four hundred pounds. 'But they won't do anything like that to Thorne.'

'More's the pity,' Illya said, and his voice still held that chilling darkness.

'Remind me never to cross you,' Napoleon said. 'If you'll break your friend's arm and slash him open with a spade edge, god knows what you'd do to your enemies.'

Illya smiled like a shark. 'I could source far more than four hundred pounds if I needed to, but I'm sure U.N.C.L.E.s best interrogation techniques will do the trick, and the US penal service will finish it off.' He smiled a more gentle smile then, and folded the blankets a little higher over Napoleon's chest. 'Go back to sleep, Napoleon,' he said. 'You've got Psych in the morning. Go to sleep. I'll be here.'

Napoleon put the empty mug down on the bedside table and rested back onto his pillows. He tasted the lingering remains of milk and whiskey all through his mouth. Not a hint of earth or stone. Just warmth and the flavour of alcohol. That finger of whiskey was already helping send relaxation through his bones, even through the aching of the arm in the cast. He felt safe and protected here in his warm bed, in his locked and alarmed apartment, with his partner sitting on the edge of his bed, watching him with unwavering eyes. He was safe and protected while he was awake, but he knew what was waiting for him in his dreams.


End file.
